Free Internet Press Newsletter - Saturday June 2 2007 - (813)

Saturday June 2 2007 edition
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In Clash With Marines, Reservists Gain Ally In VFW 2007-06-02 01:02:40 The national commander of the proud, patriotic, 2.4 million strong Veterans of Foreign Wars (motto: "Honor the dead by helping the living") took one look at the mushrooming dispute between three antiwar Marine reservists and the U.S. Marine Corps, and knew where his sympathies lay: with the protesters. "What the Marine Corps is trying to do is hush up and punish these individuals who served our country," Gary Kurpius, the national commander, said in a telephone interview. "All they're doing is exercising the same democratic voice we're trying to instill over in Iraq right now." The Marines have accused the three reservists, all members of Iraq Veterans Against the War, of wearing their uniforms during political protests and making "disrespectful" or "disloyal" statements. All three were honorably discharged from active duty, but now face "other than honorable" discharges from the inactive reserve, which could affect future employment and veterans benefits. Read The Full Story Toxic Toothpaste Made In China Found In U.S. 2007-06-02 01:02:13 Consumers were advised Friday to discard all toothpaste made in China after federal health officials said they found Chinese-made toothpaste containing a poison used in some antifreeze in three locations: Miami, Florida, the Port of Los Angeles, California, and Puerto Rico. Although there are no reports of anyone being harmed by the toothpaste, the Food and Drug Administratrion  warned that the Chinese products had a “low but meaningful risk of toxicity and injury” to children and people with kidney or liver disease. The United States is the seventh country to find tainted Chinese toothpaste within its borders in recent weeks. Read The Full Story Web Leak Puts U.S. Embassy In Iraq At Risk 2007-06-02 01:01:30 It was a short-lived but spectacular breach of security at the new U.S. embassy in Baghdad. The embassy, to be opened in September, is the most heavily fortified in the world, built to the highest security specifications possible. Access to the site is restricted to those with difficult-to-obtain security passes. It has to be: the embassy, inside the Green Zone, is the number one target for insurgents seeking to infiltrate or land a mortar; but the seemingly impregnable fortress has been breached even before it has opened, to the rage and embarrassment of U.S. officials. Read The Full Story Judge Halts Award Of Iraq Security Contract 2007-06-02 01:01:02 A federal judge Friday ordered the military to temporarily refrain from awarding the largest security contract in Iraq. The order followed an unusual series of events set off when a U.S. Army veteran filed a protest against the government practice of hiring what he calls mercenaries, according to sources familiar with the matter. The contract, worth about $475 million, calls for a private company to provide intelligence services to the U.S. Army and security for the Army Corps of Engineers on reconstruction work in Iraq. The case, which is being heard by the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, puts on trial one of the most controversial and least understood aspects of the Iraq war: the outsourcing of military security to an estimated 20,000 armed contractors who operate with little oversight. Brian X. Scott, a 53-year-old Colorado man, filed the complaint in early April. He argues that the military's use of private security contractors is "against America'score values" and violates an 1893 law that prohibits the government from hiring quasi-military forces. Read The Full Story U.S. Violent Crime Increases For Second Year 2007-06-02 01:00:12 The number of violent crimes in the United States rose for a second straight year in 2006, marking the first sustained increase in homicides, robberies and other serious offenses since the early 1990s, according to an FBI  report to be released Monday. The FBI's Uniform Crime Report will show an increase of about 1.3 percent in violent offenses last year, including a 6 percent rise in robberies and a slight rise in homicides, according to law enforcement officials, who described key findings in advance of the report's release. That follows an increase of 2.3 percent in 2005, which was the first significant increase in violent crime in 15 years. Much of the increase was concentrated in medium-size cities, including the District of Columbia, officials said. Criminologists and law enforcement officials offer varying theories for the upswing, including an increase in the juvenile population, growing numbers of released prison inmates and the rise of serious gang problems in smaller jurisdictions. Read The Full Story Swiss Raid Nazi Art Thief's Safe 2007-06-02 00:59:01 Paintings from a Swiss bank safe linked to a notorious Nazi art thief have been confiscated as part of an investigation into whether the heir of a Jewish art collector was blackmailed, authorities said Friday. The Zurich prosecutor's office said it raided the safe as part of a three-nation probe of a German art dealer accused of conspiring with an American art historian to withhold a painting by French impressionist Camille Pissarro from its rightful owner unless she paid a finder's fee equal to 18 percent of its value. Prosecutor Ivo Hoppler said the safe was rented by a trust based in the neighboring principality of Liechtenstein and was accessed by Bruno Lohse, who spirited away art from all over Europe during World War II on behalf of Hermann Goering, Hitler's top aide. Read The Full Story Commentary: Action Plan Or Stalling Tactic? Key Questions In Global Crisis 2007-06-01 18:37:59 Intellpuke: I have posted two items here on the topics of Bush and global warming. The first is from the British newspaper The Guardian. Following that is a New York Times editorial on the same topics. Here is The Guardian's article: British newspaper The Guardian writes that President Bush says the U.S. is now the global leader on climate change. But how effective will his proposals be? 1. What did President Bush announce? That the U.S. will convene a series of meetings of the world's most polluting countries to discuss action on climate change. By the end of next year, it says, these countries will agree and set a long-term goal to reduce greenhouse gases. Each country will also have an interim national target and they will cooperate to promote clean technology. 2. Why is it being seen as so important? The science on climate change is clear: human emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are rapidly warming the planet. The U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says we could have fewer than 10 years in which to start to bring levels of pollution down, if we are to avoid the worst effects over the coming century. The world's only international treaty that compels countries to act, the Kyoto protocol, runs out in 2012. If a replacement is not agreed soon, analysts fear a collapse of the emerging carbon markets set up under Kyoto - the only realistic large-scale way to bring down carbon pollution found so far. That would put attempts to control emissions back to square one and make it almost impossible to act in time. The U.S. is seen as the key to a new agreement. President Bush has no time for Kyoto-style carbon caps - binding limits on countries' carbon emissions - which he claims would damage the U.S. economy. His team has regularly tried to obstruct and delay attempts to set up a post-Kyoto deal. China and India are keen to be involved in such a deal, on non-binding terms, but want the U.S. to play ball. Read The Full Story TB Patient: 'I Hope They Forgive Me' 2007-06-01 13:55:38 An Atlanta attorney quarantined with a dangerous strain of tuberculosis apologized to his fellow plane passengers in an interview aired Friday, and insisted he was told he wasn't contagious or a threat to anyone. "I've lived in this state of constant fear and anxiety and exhaustion for a week now, and to think that someone else is now feeling that, I wouldn't want anyone to feel that way. It's awful," Andrew Speaker told ABC's "Good Morning America" from his hospital room in Denver, Colorado. Sitting in street clothes but speaking through a face mask, he repeatedly apologized to the dozens of airline passengers and crew members now anxiously awaiting their own test results because of the exposure to him. "I don't expect for people to ever forgive me. I just hope that they understand that I truly never meant to put them in harm," he said, his voice cracking. Speaker, 31, said he, his doctors and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention all knew he h Read The Full Story Bush's Emissions Plan 'A Delaying Tactic' 2007-06-01 13:55:12 Environmental groups Friday condemned George Bush's proposed global plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, labelling it a stalling tactic lacking concrete details. The U.S. president's proposals, outlined in a speech Thursday, appeared to cast severe doubt on international efforts for a U.N.-brokered successor to the Kyoto protocol on climate change, which ends in 2012. It also seemingly hit European hopes before a G8 summit in Germany next week that industrialized nations will make a firm commitment to halving their emissions by 2050. Environmentalists on both sides of the Atlantic condemned Bush's speech as vague and insubstantial and unlikely to herald any real progress before he leaves office at the start of 2009. Read The Full Story Musharraf Government Bans Political Meetings In Islamabad 2007-06-01 13:54:33 The Pakistani government has banned political meetings in Islamabad and restricted media coverage of the suspended chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. The restrictions are part of a drive to curb the democracy movement swelling around the embattled judge, whose rallies have attracted hundreds of thousands of supporters. An Islamabad city official said all meetings of more than five people would require government permission "to ensure peace and avoid inconvenience to the public". Article continues Three weeks ago city authorities brought Islamabad to a halt for a political rally by President Pervez Musharraf, who is trying to fire Justice Chaudhry. Political violence in Karachi on the same day caused 42 deaths. Read The Full Story Kidnapped BBC Reporter Video: 'I'm In Good Health' 2007-06-01 13:53:25 Kidnapped BBC Gaza correspondent Alan Johnston said that his captors have been treating him well in a video released Friday. The BBC reporter, who was kidnapped at gunpoint in Gaza City on March 12, appears in a red top, filmed from the waist up and talking to camera in the video posted on the Al-Ekhlaas website, which is frequently used by Islamic militants. The BBC journalist's appearance in the video release Friday is the first time he has been heard from since he was kidnapped in Gaza City nearly three months ago. "First of all, my captors have treated me very well," Johnston said on the video. "They have fed me well, there has been no violence towards me at all and I'm in good health." Read The Full Story Senate Panel Question CIA Detentions 2007-06-01 02:43:49 The Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday questioned the continuing value of the Central Intelligence Agency's secret interrogation program for terrorism suspects, suggesting that international condemnation and the obstacles it has created to criminal prosecution may outweigh its worth in gathering information. The committee rejected by one vote a Democratic proposal that would essentially have cut money for the program by banning harsh interrogation techniques except in dire emergencies, a committee report revealed. “More than five years after the decision to start the program,” the report said, “the committee believes that consideration should be given to whether it is the best means to obtain a full and reliable intelligence debriefing of a detainee.” Read The Full Story China's Energy Rush Shatters Village 2007-06-01 02:43:16 Chen Xiao'e was home alone and fast asleep, she recalled, when the windows started to shatter for no apparent reason, like a scene out of a horror movie. "I was frightened out of my wits," said Chen. That scary night was only the beginning. Pretty soon cracks appeared in the walls, some several inches wide. Then the floor buckled. Ultimately, Chen and her family had to move out and seek shelter elsewhere. Their three-year-old brick home became too dangerous to live in. The house joined a growing list of buildings in Da Antou that have slumped to one side and split apart over the last several years because of what is happening beneath them. The mountain atop which the village was built has been so honeycombed with underground coal mining that the crust of the earth is giving way. "The earth below us is hollow because of the coal mining," said Li Xiaozhi, the village paramedic, who has been forced to move his family out of three houses since 2003 and now stays in the local clinic. "Almost every house has cracks now. The only difference is how big they are." Read The Full Story Guantanamo Detainee Found Dead Trained With U.S. Forces 2007-06-01 02:42:19 A detainee found dead in his cell at Guantanamo Bay on Wednesday was a Saudi army veteran who trained with U.S. forces before fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan, according to military hearing records. Abdul Rahman Ma'ath Thafir al-Amri had been imprisoned at the military detention facility in Cuba since February 2002 without meeting with a lawyer or being charged with a crime, according to a legal defense group - a circumstance that the group said could explain his apparent suicide. U.S. officials said he was not on suicide watch at the time guards found him unresponsive Wednesday afternoon, but they have declined to provide details or evidence of his cause of death. Amri's body will be prepared for repatriation to Saudi Arabia after an autopsy, the officials said Thursday. Saudi officials Thursday identified the detainee as Amri, 34, who told his U.S. captors that he was essentially a foot soldier in Afghanistan because he felt a duty to fight jihad. U.S. Southern Command officials characterized Amri as a mid-level al-Qaeda operative who ran safe houses and fought against the United States in November 2001. Read The Full Story Bush Tells Iraq President U.S. Firm On Iraq Aid 2007-06-01 02:41:44 President Bush on Thursday assured Iraqi President Jalal Talabani that he is "fully committed" to aiding the Iraqi government and dispatched a top aide to Baghdad to help leaders there make good on their promises. Talabani, whose visit to the United States has included medical treatment at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, looked hearty as he sat in the Oval Office and defended his country's progress. "I told the president that I'm fully committed to helping the Iraqi government achieve important objectives," said Bush.  "We call them benchmarks - political law necessary to show the Iraqi citizens that there is a unified government willing to work on the interest of all people," he said. Read The Full Story	Abuse And Incompetence In Fight Against Global Warming 2007-06-02 01:02:29 A Guardian investigation has found evidence of serious irregularities at the heart of the process the world is relying on to control global warming. The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which is supposed to offset greenhouse gases emitted in the developed world by selling carbon credits from elsewhere, has been contaminated by gross incompetence, rule-breaking and possible fraud by companies in the developing world, according to U.N. paperwork, an unpublished expert report and alarming feedback from projects on the ground. One senior figure suggested there may be faults with up to 20% of the carbon credits - known as certified emissions reductions - already sold. Since these are used by European governments and corporations to justify increases in emissions, the effect is that in some cases malpractice at the CDM has added to the net amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. Read The Full Story Tropical Storm Barbara Strengthens 2007-06-02 01:02:00 The second named storm of the eastern Pacific hurricane season regained tropical storm force Friday and was expected to make landfall on Saturday near the Mexico-Guatemala border. A tropical storm watch was in force from Sipacate, Guatemala, to Barra de Tonala, Mexico, and the U.S. Hurricane Center in Miami warned that Barbara was gaining strength and could unleash life-threatening flooding and mudslides. The storm was forecast to dump up to 10 inches of rain over portions of southeastern Mexico and Guatemala, and up to 20 inches in parts. With maximum winds of near 50 mph, the storm was centered about 110 miles west-southwest of the Guatemala-Mexico border. Read The Full Story Dan Bartlett, Key Aide To Bush, To Resign Next Month 2007-06-02 01:01:17 White House counselor Dan Bartlett, one of President Bush's closest and most trusted aides, said Friday that he will resign his post in July, leaving a void in an administration that has seen a string of departures as it struggles with sagging public approval ratings. Bartlett, the father of three young children, said he will seek work in the private sector so he can spend more time with his family. The announcement came on his 36th birthday. "I've had competing families. And, unfortunately, the Bush family has prevailed too many times, and it's high time for the Bartlett family to prevail," he told reporters. He has spent virtually his entire career working for Bush, starting in 1993, as Bush prepared for his first gubernatorial campaign in Texas. That relationship has allowed Bartlett to speak candidly with the president and to expand his strategic communications role into that of a policy adviser to the president with a portfolio. Read The Full Story Tensions Emerge Between Spain, U.S. 2007-06-02 01:00:26 Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a lightning stop here Friday, intending to signal an end to the Bush administration's diplomatic deepfreeze of the Spanish government, but new tensions emerged over dealings with Cuba.  Spanish officials were annoyed that Rice earlier this week rapped Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos for visiting Havana without meeting dissidents. Speaking to reporters as she flew to Madrid from Berlin, Rice reiterated those comments. Cuba has "a major transition coming," she said, alluding to the illness of longtime leader Fidel Castro. "I think democratic states have an obligation to act democratically, to support opposition in Cuba, not to give the regime the idea that it is just going to be transition from one dictatorship to another." Read The Full Story 18 Dead, Dozens Wounded As Army And Militants Clash In Lebanon 2007-06-02 00:59:33 Under a hail of gunfire and mortar shells, Lebanon’s army on Friday moved closer to a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon where a group of militants has been hiding, seizing new ground in a daylong fight that left 18 dead and dozens wounded. After days of relative quiet as the army maintained its presence outside the camp, Lebanese troops fought much of the day to seize positions that had been occupied by the militants, who belong to the Fatah al Islam militia, inspired by al-Qaeda. Army artillery took aim at sniper perches on the northern and eastern edges of the camp, an army official said, striking tall buildings that sent plumes of smoke billowing from inside the camp. The army said 16 people in the camp and two soldiers had been killed, with 60 civilians and 18 soldiers wounded. It said that it could not break down the deaths between militants and civilians but that the total number of people killed since fighting began on May 20 exceeded 100, including soldiers, militants and civilians. Read The Full Story Minnesota Case Fits Pattern In U.S.Attorneys Flap 2007-06-01 18:38:17 For more than 15 years, clean-cut, square-jawed Tom Heffelfinger was the embodiment of a tough Republican prosecutor. Named U.S. attorney for Minnesota in 1991, he won a series of high-profile white-collar crime and gun and explosives cases. By the time Heffelfinger resigned last year, his office had collected a string of awards and commendations from the Justice Department. So it came as a surprise - and something of a mystery - when he turned up on a list of U.S. attorneys who had been targeted for firing. Part of the reason, government documents and other evidence suggest, is that he tried to protect voting rights for Native Americans. At a time when GOP activists wanted U.S. attorneys to concentrate on pursuing voter fraud cases, Heffelfinger's office was expressing deep concern about the effect of a state directive that could have the effect of discouraging Indians in Minnesota from casting ballots. Read The Full Story Oil Industry Fights Oil Prices Probe 2007-06-01 18:36:58 The American Petroleum Institute has hit the airwaves to beat back calls on Capitol Hill to create a windfall profits tax or make price-gouging a federal crime, airing radio ads in “most major media markets” during this week’s congressional recess to remind consumers about the negative impact Congress had when it tried to temper gas prices in the 1970s. The ads take a not-so-nostalgic view of the disco era to warn voters of the long lines at the pump when Congress tried to reduce the cost of gasoline by taking on oil-producing countries with a series of price controls and energy taxes, said an API spokesman. An announcer encourages listeners to "tell Congress to leave relics like gasoline price controls and policies that discourage domestic energy development where they belong, back in the 1970s,” according to excerpts published in the Houston Chronicle on Friday. Read The Full Story Bush Administration Rebukes Putin's Policies 2007-06-01 13:55:26 A top Russia expert at the State Department issued an unusually sharp public criticism on Thursday of Moscow’s behavior under President Vladimir V. Putin,describing the Kremlin as bullying its neighbors while silencing political opponents and suppressing individual rights at home. The comments, approved by the White House, are the latest volley of criticism between Washington and Moscow in recent days. Although the White House said this week that President Bush would play host to Putin on July 1 at the Bush family compound in Maine, the speech is likely to add tension at a time when the broader dialogue between Washington and Moscow is already taking the most caustic tones since the collapse of communism. “We do no one any favors, least of all the Russian people and even their government, by abstaining from speaking out when necessary,” the Russia expert, David Kramer, the deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, said in a speech Thursday night before the Baltimore Council on Foreign Affairs. Read The Full Story U.S. House Speaker Pelosi Say Bush "In Denial" On Global Warming 2007-06-01 13:55:00 House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called President George W. Bush's new global warming plan a "profound disappointment" on Friday and said she wants Congress to pass legislation this year to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Just returned from a European tour focused on climate change, Pelosi said Bush's strategy, announced on Thursday, "rehashed stale ideas" and made her question whether the president understands the urgency of global warming. "The science is clear, and yet the president continues to be in denial," Pelosi said at a briefing. "Yes, he says now he believes that global warming is happening and he accepts the science that it is ... But if that were so, if he truly understood that, he could not have come up with a proposal that is 'aspirational'." Read The Full Story Toll Dodgers Tear Hole Through China's Great Wall 2007-06-01 13:53:50 Not much has been allowed to get in the way of China's spectacular economic development. But when a mining company knocked down part of the Great Wall so its trucks could deliver coal more efficiently, it was a step too far, even for the pro-business government in Beijing. The state media said Thursday that the authorities have launched an inquiry into the destruction of a 400-year-old section of the world heritage site near Hujiayao village, on the border between the northern province of Shanxi and inner Mongolia. Local coal firms were accused of removing soil and bricks from the ancient monument to build workers' houses. They are also said to have piled heaps of coal against the rampart and opened up a "big gap" in the wall to make a new road, so their trucks could avoid motorway tolls. Read The Full Story Gates, U.S. General Back Long Iraq Stay, Similar To South Korea 2007-06-01 02:44:09 U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates and a senior U.S. commander said yesterday that they favor a protracted U.S. troop presence in Iraq along the lines of the military stabilization force in South Korea. Gates told reporters in Hawaii that he is thinking of "a mutual agreement" with Iraq in which "some force of Americans ... is present for a protracted period of time, but in ways that are protective of the sovereignty of the host government." Gates said such a long-term U.S. presence would assure allies in the Middle East that the United States will not withdraw from Iraq as it did from Vietnam, "lock, stock and barrel." Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, who oversees daily military operations in Iraq, supported the idea at a news conference in which he also said U.S. militaryunits are trying to reach cease-fire agreements with Iraqi insurgents. Read The Full Story Bush Kills Off Hopes For G8 Climate Change Plan 2007-06-01 02:43:34 George Bush Thursday threw international efforts to control climate change into confusion with a proposal to create a "new global framework" to curb greenhouse gas emissions as an alternative to a planned U.N. process. The proposal came less than a week before a G8 summit in Germany and appeared to hit European hopes that the world's industrialised nations would commit to halving their emissions by 2050. A U.N.-brokered meeting in Bali in December, at which it had been hoped to agree to keep climate change to a 2 degrees Celsius increase in temperature, is supposed to provide a successor to the Kyoto protocol. All that was thrown in doubt by the initiative announced Thursday by President Bush. "By the end of next year, America and other nations will set a long-term global goal for reducing greenhouse gases. To help develop this goal, the United States would convene a series of meetings of nations that produced most greenhouse gas emissions, including nations with rapidly growing economies like India and China," said Bush. Read The Full Story Britain May Seek Iran's Help In Finding Hostages In Iraq 2007-06-01 02:42:49 Britain is considering a direct approach to Iran for help in discovering the whereabouts of four British security guards and a financial consultant abducted in Iraq and who was responsible for seizing them. The issue was raised Thursday at a meeting of Cobra, Whitehall's emergency committee, the Guardian has learned. Senior Iraqi officials said they were working on the theory that the gang behind the kidnapping was a rogue faction of the Mahdi army of the radical Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, possibly operating under the influence of Iranian intelligence. "We do not think that Sadr ordered this operation, but we are almost certain that some militia members who profess loyalty to him were involved," said a senior foreign ministry official. He said that "the lack of organization and discipline" within the Mahdi army's ranks had allowed the Iranians to move in and bring some of Sadr's fighters under their control. "They [the Iranians] want to show the U.S. that they have influence over the Mahdi army, and that the U.S. must come to them for help," he said. Read The Full Story Heavy Fighting Resumes In Lebanon 2007-06-01 02:41:59 Heavy fighting resumed Friday between the Lebanese army and Islamic militants at a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon. Army tanks and armor massed outside the camp, apparently preparing to storm it. Under an artillery cover, about 50 armored carriers and tanks massed at the northern edge of the camp and drove toward the forward-most positions, according to an Associated Press Television News crew at the scene. But it was not clear whether the Lebanese troops were already making a push. Military officials would not comment. Read The Full Story
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